


Rut

by RadiatorfromSpace



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alfheim, Bestiality, Centaurs, Interspecies Sex, Light Elves, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Must, Pregnancy, Rutting, Semi-Intersex Loki, Thor is happy ‘cause he’s gonna have a family but Loki doesn’t know why Thor keeps hugging his belly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 17:06:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3496187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RadiatorfromSpace/pseuds/RadiatorfromSpace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a member of his village falls ill, Light Elf!Loki must go into the centaur’s forest in search of a medicinal herb.  Centaur!Thor helps him find it.  And Thor’s in the middle of his mating season, so, yanno.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rut

The spring day is mild and temperate.  
  
A sheen of sweat glistens on the centaur’s skin. Muscles and veins bulge everywhere and he pants, his tongue lolling, as he tries to make the world stop spinning. He is not from here, the centaur rut spurred him from his usual territory. Spurs him now, a constant, relentless energy that coils between his hind legs and maddens him. Too many scents.  
  
He plunges through the woods, his strong legs launching him over boulders and immense, ancient roots. He bellows as he gallops, his diaphragm sucking and expelling great gusts of air, but the many, cloying scents will not leave his nostrils. His heavy hooves leave deep imprints in the moist, mossy earth. He is roughly one ton of muscle, bone, and organ.  
  
He skids to a halt at the top of a rocky outcropping overlooking a pristine pond. He detects movement below. His whole body automatically orients itself toward it.  
  
Upright, two legs. Does not sway or leap like a faun. Fair, glowing skin, but it does not pain his eyes like fey. Mer? He scents the air. Too far. He leaps quietly down the side of the outcropping and comes closer. He sniffs again.  
  
Mer. Sunrays swim through his glossy, black mane like fish in a stream.  
  
The centaur can see him clearly now, and he stares: He surpasses fireflies and sunsets and pearls.  
  
Tickles. Skin prickles. The muscles beneath his fur contract briefly. His shoulders sag, his pupils dilate, and a tendril of lust spreads from his loins to his lungs.  
  
He steps forward, out from the shade of the trees. He tries to find his voice; Mer is tame. Tame does not take to brazen wild.  
  
When the verdant eyes snap to him, the centaur parts his lips, a courting croon already rising from his throat.  
  
~  
  
Loki halts when he catches sight of the centaur. His skin is sun-kissed and the sun’s rays are tangled up in his golden mane. His eyes are the sky that encircles the sun. He is so golden, Elven artists would depict him as Son of the Sun God.  
  
This is not one of the centaurs who trades with Loki’s tribe in the nearby village. The elf flexes his fingers and readies runes of evasion and protection. It is spring, it is the centaur’s rut. If he considers Loki a threat, he will chase him from his territory. Unless he catches him, in which case he may rip Loki limb from limb.  
  
He is smiling at Loki—a centaur’s smile is always open-mouthed, they seem physically incapable of the alternative—and his body language is open and friendly. Loki’s ears detect the centaur’s unmistakable _crooja_ , a soft, lilting vocal cry centaurs use to communicate friendliness or appeasement. _Crooja_ translates to “soft-sound”, a sound of welcome, and sometimes “please”.  
  
Loki dispels the runes.  
  
“Hail, Lit Mer! What brings you to the woods?” the centaur calls out to him. His voice melodious and his syllables are curled by the centauri accent. In truth, it is not an accent, for the centauri people have no language of their own. It is the result of some subtle differences in the lengths and ranges of mobility of the muscles in their mouths and throats.  
  
“Hail, Child of Raeja!” Loki calls back to him. “A member of my tribe has fallen ill with _wrotheshanks_. I am in search of Morticant for his treatment. Its leaves are white against veins of purple and it glows day and night. Have you seen any in the woods?”  
  
As luck would have it, he has. He offers to take Loki to it.  
  
~  
  
They journey together deep into the forest. Their chat is amiable, Thor warming to him with a level of ease that inspires Loki, makes him feel brave. His mother always emphasized to him the importance of keeping his sharp tongue to himself, for it would foster affection in no one. The elf lets loose and does not suppress it.  
  
Thor laughs merrily at Loki’s sour comments and his scathing wit. They please him. Loki beams in triumph, for Frigga is wrong on her most adamant claim: the prickliness in him indeed endear him to  _someone_.  
  
They travel deeper into the woods. At the edge of a swamp, Thor makes _crooja_ again and offers to carry Loki across. Loki feels a thrum of particular pleasure when he is aloft and locked in Thor’s muscled arms. He wraps his arms about the centaur’s big shoulders and the blond chatters pleasantly to him as they make their way across. The elf feels himself growing ever more comfortable with his new friend, but he hides away his desire. And for being in rut, Thor is restraining himself admirably well. But the eyes and the frequent shivers betray Thor’s lust.  
  
Loki remembers the anklet of wood and bone on his left ankle. It is one of his pieces of ancestral jewelry which tradition dictates he never remove. Each one bears an enchantment by a deceased relative. The anklet in question is supposed to protect Loki from the lusts of wild beasts, but everyone in the tribe knows that uncle was a charlatan.  
  
Loki amuses himself by listening to the fluctuations in the thickness of Thor’s accent. Sometimes it is all but absent and sometimes Loki must ask Thor to repeat himself because his syllables are so curled. He wonders what governs the change in his accent. He wonders the same question about the melodiousness of Thor’s speech. Centaurs had a tendency to unconsciously involve excessive pitch and tone variation in their speech. It is a commonplace joke in any realm where centaurs exist.  
  
They find Morticant just where Thor remembered it. Loki takes a special knife with a blade of blessed Damascus steel to harvest several leaves from one of the plants. He wraps the leaves in a lambskin envelope and tucks it into his pack.  
  
Then the rain comes down. Loki yelps while Thor smiles at his surprise; centaurs know which way the weather will turn hours before it does. Together they run in search of shelter, ending up in a dark cave.  
  
Thor trots in, his hoof beats sending sharp echoes into the darkness beyond them. Loki lingers at the mouth of the cave, for he has not a drop of wood or dark elf blood in him; he is unused to listening to his senses and he is far too afraid of the dark.  
  
“Is it safe?” Loki asks. “Do you smell any predators in the cave?”  
  
Thor laughs. “All is safe, Fair Child. The last meat-eater who lived in this cave left weeks ago.” The centaur shakes his mane, ridding it of some of the water, and lies down against the wall of the cave. His nose wrinkles and he tries to blow an unpleasant scent from his nostrils: “But there are bats deep within.”  
  
Loki casts his eyes about the cave. All of it looks decidedly hard, cold, and unwelcoming. He scowls, shivers, and then, without thinking, snaps out runes for a fire. A merry blaze springs up instantly two feet away from his new centaur friend.  
  
It sends Thor to his hooves with a startled whinny. He quickly backs away, deeper into the cave. Loki approaches Thor with his arms outstretched until he can lay his hands on the centaur. He soothes him with caresses and soft-sounds.  
  
_“Crooja,”_ Loki murmurs, “It’s all right! I cast magic fires every day, I didn’t think. I am sorry I frightened you. _Crooja._ It’s all right, Thor.”  
  
Thor calms as Loki touches him. The fear in Thor’s eyes runs away and his shoulders grow slack once more. Loki cups his cheek. The elf makes _crooja_ again, and the centaur leans into the touch.  
  
“Come lie beside the fire with me. It will dry us faster,” Loki says as he pulls the centaur back towards the fire. Loki draws a blanket from his pack and casts runes of expanding over it, so the sheet he unfurls is large enough to pad both of their bodies against the rough stone and then some.  
  
Thor lies down on the blanket and experimentally runs his hands over it. It is probably one of the few times he has touched woven fabric. He draws his hands back and forth over the material, feeling it first with his palms and then the backs of his hands. He nuzzles against it and snuffles at it.  
  
“Burnt leaves and mulberry,” Thor comments and keeps sniffing.  
  
Loki watches him as he strips himself of his soaked clothing. First the tunic, then his undershirt, then slippers, then trousers. He leaves only his ancestral jewelry.  
  
Now Thor is watching him.  
  
It is mating season. Loki asks Thor why he is helping him instead of chasing mares.  
  
Thor gives him his centauri smile. “Why just mares? Only female centaurs are female. The rest of us are hermaphrodites. I can sire and I can bear,” Thor answers with a faint blush.  
  
Loki hums. Centaur physiology fascinates him. He sits down beside Thor on the blanket.  
  
“Do centaurs nurse their young?” he asks.  
  
Thor whickers an affirmative. “It never looks so, but beneath this muscle here,” he points to his bulging pectoral muscles, “milk can come. We never wind up with breasts like the females, though.”  
  
“Here?” Loki asks. He reaches out and touches Thor’s chest where he had pointed. Male elves could bear young, too, but only when female elves were scarce, and the males never nursed. It was either find a nursing lady elf or use goat’s milk.  
  
The elf runs his hand over the muscle again, then his hand slips downward, delving into grooves and over bulges of muscle and more muscle. Thor is gorgeous, golden.  
  
“Have you ever?”  
  
“No,” Thor shakes his head.  
  
“Do you have any young?”  
  
Again, Thor shakes his head.  
  
“But this is not your first season, yes?”  
  
“Not my first season. But years ago one miscarried and the others did not want young,” Thor replies. His blue gaze bores intently into Loki’s. Loki cannot break the eye contact. He is growing progressively more relaxed. Perhaps centaurs produce pheromones which have this effect on those in close proximity to them?  
  
When Loki’s eyes grow glassy, Thor leans in and butts his nose against the elf’s shoulder. Loki does not shy away. Thor gently places his hand on Loki’s arm and begins to caress up and down the length of the limb. He nuzzles the side of Loki’s neck and wraps his free arm around the elf’s waist and draws him close.  
  
The elves have a taboo against mating with centaurs. Loki has never known why.  
  
Thor begins running his fingers through Loki’s long, dark hair. Loki lets his eyelids flutter shut and leans into the touch. “Is this how you start your courtship?” he teases.  
  
“Normally, I start by racing around a field to prove my strength and stamina,” Thor jokes lightly, but his accent is growing thicker. The change calls to something in Loki and he feels a thrum of pleasure in his groin.  
  
Loki has never been one to run with the crowd.  
  
Loki wraps his arms about Thor’s shoulders and kisses him. His legs are already spread open around Thor’s hips. The elf dips his hand below the swell of the centaur’s lowest abdominal muscle, feeling the short coat of blond fur beneath it. Just an inch or so below the crest of fur, he finds it: already swollen full and throbbing. Thor groans into Loki’s mouth as he cups the organ. Loki feels a viscous substance oozing from a gland just above the base of his cock which forms a thick, slick layer over the skin.  
  
Thor locks his arms about Loki’s form and rises to his hooves, hauling the elf up with him.  
  
The kisses are getting deeper, Thor’s tongue now finds its way into Loki’s to feel more of him. With the cave wall at his back, Loki presses forward and grinds his needy cock against Thor’s. The blond bucks his hips. The centaur’s grip is growing tighter. Loki realizes this is the last point at which he can stop this, for very soon the beast in Thor will not let him go.  
  
Maybe the elf is floating on pheromones, but each display of Thor’s bestial strength sends a new wave of excitement through him. He locks his pale legs about Thor’s waist.  
  
Loki spreads the slick over one of Thor’s hands and draws the centaur’s wet digits to his entrance. He guides one finger inside, shows him how, and Thor quickly gets the hang of it. Soon he is working multiple fingers in and out of Loki’s passage as Loki is rolling his hips into each thrust. Loki bites and sucks at the centaur’s neck in exchange for huffs and moans. Loki hears a hoof scraping the rock beneath him as Thor tries to gain more purchase; he wants to buck. Loki grinds their hips together. Thor groans softly and his fingers slip out. He places his arm against the wall so Loki can use it as a pillow.  
  
Loki places his hand against Thor’s weeping gland, then runs his hand over the human cock to wet it.  
  
Thor’s breath comes in soft, short grunts and his eyes are so very dark as they bore into Loki. He is all beast now. Loki shivers at the realization, runs his reverent hands over the many muscles in Thor’s arms. Such tension, held in check only by a thread. It will be explosive and rough when released.  
  
Elves did not mate with centaurs for a reason.  
  
Loki brings his mouth to Thor’s ear and makes _crooja_.  
  
Thor bucks. Buried to the hilt upon first thrust. Loki’s eyes roll back and he surrenders.  
  
~  
  
Two cocks, both suffering from the centauri must. If the bestial need in the first was impressive, the second is immense. Loki’s crown brushes against the furred underside of Thor’s stomach. The elf is on his hands and knees to sate the horse cock brushing against his left cheek. It is already weeping its seed onto his thigh.  
  
He folded the thick blanket into a pillow four layers thick before assuming this position. He knows he will need it.  
  
Loki looks into Thor’s flushed, dazed face. His human half is bent forward, his head hanging between his front legs as he caresses Loki’s shoulders. Or is his intent to hold the elf in place? He need not worry, Loki thinks as he backs himself against the head of the horse cock. Nothing can diminish Loki’s need for what is about to happen.  
  
He reaches back and grasps the slick head, then pulls it in line with his entrance. He presses his hips back, until his little ring of muscle just swallows the head. Then an inhuman sound comes from Thor’s mouth, his hoof stamps, and his hips. Slam.  
  
_FUCK_ , Loki yells. Stars. White stars. His body is thrown forward but Thor’s hands keep him in position, locking him in place on his cock. Again, he slams forward. The massive head is all hurled into his prostate: bull’s eye, sharpshooter, perfection. Loki cannot swallow the delirious sob that spills from his mouth. His limbs are already starting to shake and now he is dimly aware this means he should be scared. No, he is scared. Frightened he cannot withstand Thor, but then the horse hips buck again, knocking bliss and immensity into the elf from ass to crown. The centaur settles into a rhythm that makes it better—he’s not sure it is better, he can’t think. But he is babbling through one flash of white light after another as Thor mounts him. At one point, Loki’s ears register that he is begging, pleading for Thor to continue, give him more, yes, RIGHT there, YES, full, _so_ full, Gods please, and so it is good.  
  
The centaur is approaching what he needs. His thrusts become faster and inconceivably harder, ramming, fucking. His rutting is punctuated by the sounds that are ripped from Loki’s throat: moans, sobs, and cries. He is literally crying—crying out in bliss and tears are streaming down his face. It is all one hair’s breadth away from too much.  
  
Loki’s orgasm tears through him. He shudders, sobs, wails, quakes. His arms give out and then his face lands mercifully on the blanket, but his ass is still in the air, still available for Thor to take what his maddening, bestial must is demanding.  
  
Thor gasps and releases a bellow, shoves himself as deep as he can into the elf’s body. The centaur gasps for air.  
  
Loki is floating. He is dimly aware that the intrusion in his body is growing, not shrinking: a new heat is seeping into him, reaching even deeper than Thor’s cock was able. It flows into him. And flows, and flows. Thor keeps himself sheathed until he is done spilling. The instinctive logic of the deeper the seed, the greater the chance of a crop, Loki’s maleness notwithstanding.  
  
At length, Thor pulls out and backs up over the elf, careful not to clip him. Thor collapses on the ground beside him. The centaur says nothing until he catches his breath. His spring must temporarily sated, Thor is sane enough to be worried. His brow is furrowed as he prods at Loki’s unresponsive form.  
  
The afterglow pervades Loki, making his entire body feel as dense as smoke. He is overwhelmed, exhausted, and in love. This man-beast. This creature. Loki sees his handsome face and apparently the look the elf gives him is rapturous, for all the lines of worry are promptly erased from Thor’s face. He smiles his golden, open-mouthed smile and pulls Loki’s limp body against him. The centaur’s body heat makes Loki’s body feel like it is melting. He releases an appreciative groan.  
  
Loki’s green eyes fall on a heap of ashes. Oh, the fire went out.  
  
~~  
  
They eat the foodstuffs from Loki’s pack and soon slumber. But Loki wakes in the middle of the night and he is no longer overwhelmed, he understands completely: he needs must have it again. So he rouses Thor, gets the centaur to lie on his back, hooves akimbo, and bounces up and down on the massive horse cock. There is nothing better, Loki thinks as it fills him utterly. Loki cums and Thor spills inside of him again. The elf falls asleep against his horse belly, too exhausted to move.  
  
Come morning, Loki awakes to find his cheek pillowed upon one of Thor’s front hooves. After he rises, the numbness in his cheek subsides. Ow. Then the act of sitting on his bum. Double ow.  
  
Thor awakens and stretches—the elf nimbly evades the hooves—and grabs Loki for a cuddle. He nuzzles into the black mane of hair and hums contentedly. Clearly, his rut madness has not yet returned.  
  
“How are you?” Thor asks. His voice is melodious but his accent faint.  
  
Loki makes a sound of happiness and satisfaction. “Probably quite bruised.”  
  
Thor licks his neck. “I can kiss it better,” he croons and bites into the ticklish spot on the elf’s neck. Loki sputters with giggles and tries to push him away, but the centaur is having none of that. He turns Loki to face him and somehow tickling becomes kissing and then Thor’s human cock is buried inside of the pale elf again. Neither one said no.  
  
~  
  
Thor escorted Loki all the way back to the village. Of course, they made several stops to rest, eat, and rut, but never in that order.  
  
Once at the village, they bade each other farewell. Loki returned to his little hut to craft the cure for Helblindi after he watched Thor canter back to the forest. The very next day, Loki caught sight of the centaur in the field between the village and the forest’s edge again and the blond invited him out for more frolic. They returned hours later, exhausted and happy. Thor seemed to have two modes: being a living embodiment of the fiery intensity of the sun (when he was pursuing or rutting Loki) and being sweetness itself (whenever he was not rutting Loki).  
  
The next time they struck out into the wilds together, Loki packed enough supplies to last him four days. He wound up staying with Thor for six.  
  
~  
  
On the afternoon of the fourth day, Thor comes over and begins snuffling at him, an idiosyncrasy to which Loki has grown accustomed. Thor sniffs his hair, his lips, his neck, then down and down, and then up again, and lingers around Loki’s taut, flat abdomen. The elf fondly pets the centaur’s blond mane as he waits for him to finish so they can continue on to the gorgeous fey glen Thor had promised to show him. They rutted throughout the past three days, and this morning. They will inevitably rut in the glen later, too, whether the fey cheer or boo.  
  
Then his feet are off the ground and Thor is crushing him in a gigantic bear hug.  
  
Thor makes _fa, fa, fa_ —he will not stop making _fa_ —as he showers Loki with kisses. Then Thor releases him, backs up a safe distance, rears, twirls, and rushes back to Loki to trap him in his arms again. _Fa, fa_. The elf laughs and feels Thor’s elation infect him. Thor whickers and snorts and rubs his nose against Loki’s in a downright obscene display of affection.  
  
Thor picks the elf up, wraps Loki’s legs around his hips, and presses him against a beech tree.  
  
_Fa,_ Thor huffs, and kisses Loki. Softly, slowly. The intimacy of it sends flutters from Loki’s throat to his fingers. _Fa_ again, then the same tender kiss. _“Fa, fa, fa,”_ Loki murmurs back against the centaur’s soft lips.  
  
They make out like this for some time. Loki is dizzy by the time Thor pulls back. Then Thor gently fits his human cock into Loki and the elf’s eyelids slide shut. A wave of bliss engulfs him. The pleasure of it is unlike their normal rutting which is punctuated by intense bursts of ecstasy from the sheer vigorousness of it; this time Thor remains mostly still, utterly happy to merely fill Loki. Loki feels the centaur’s soft exhalations against his face, the occasional flutter of blond eyelashes, the solid closeness of Thor’s mouth pressing resolutely against his. _Fa._  
  
Thor holds him against that tree with one tan, burly arm looped underneath Loki’s bottom and his free hand locked on the elf’s belly.  
  
~  
  
For the past month, he has rarely been in the same room as a full length mirror for a full five minutes, much less thought to use one.  
  
Loki turns before the mirror in his hut, his face stony as he gazes at his reflection. That dumb, base beast. That worthless, little... He tugs his tunic back down.  
  
He pulls down his trousers and presses his fingertips along the stretch of skin between his testicles and his hole. His face darkens and he snarls into the dim of his hut. His fingertips glide over the rudiments of a slit behind his balls, a slit which will soon develop into a fully functional canal.  
  
This would explain it, this would indeed: Why Thor’s maddening rut lust suddenly dampened to something like a sane person’s sex drive in the _middle_ of mating season. And the simultaneous flourishing of his affection for Loki, which had hardly been lukewarm to begin with. Why his big, tan hands had kept sliding over Loki’s belly. How had Thor known?  
  
His stomach emits a loud growl. Loki resists the hunger clawing at him. He resists it out of anger and denial. Maybe he can starve it out.  
  
Male light elves can only bear young during prolonged periods in which females are scarce, he had thought. At least six months of real, true, drought of lady elves within one hundred miles, the elders had professed.  
  
Loki had not even known light elves could conceive with centaurs.  
  
~  
  
Their routine has been to visit about every other day. Loki breaks their plans for the next day, but he does not communicate this to Thor. Instead, he casts an illusion to disguise the bump in his normally taut belly and holes himself up in his hut. Social butterfly that he is not, his solitude is easy to maintain. He barely contributes to the function or economy of the village and he is able to do that because he is the first and favorite son of Frigga, the tribe’s Matriarch.  
  
His anger is company enough. He reads. He crafts illusions of armies slaughtering each other with seidr. The soldiers transform into centaurs in their death throes. When his stomach growls at him, he growls back. Sometimes he uses seidr to spy the field beyond the centaur’s forest in his looking glass, to check if the blond, burly centaur is still there, still waiting, still hoping.  
  
Nine out of ten times: Yes.  
  
Then on the seventh day, Frigga lifts the flap over his doorway and the sunlight slides in with her.  
  
Merely the sight of her reduces Loki to a scared child. The book he was reading drops to the table and he covers his face in his hands. He pours his energy into his illusion, yet he knows she can see through it.  
  
“You need not bother, my son,” Frigga the Matriarch tells him. She sits down across from him at the table. “Besides, I can smell the child is a centaur.”  
  
Loki feels himself crumbling. He is found out. It was taboo. The Light Elves have few taboos, but may the wind, rain, and earth protect those fools who violate them.  
  
“Mother, please, do not cast me out of the village,” Loki pleads. His voice is very quiet. He can feel her gaze heavy on him. His eyes are closed against his balled fists, as though to doubly ensure he cannot meet her gaze. “I did not know, I did not mean to, I am not a deviant!”  
  
Frigga laughs and takes one of his hands in her own and rubs soothing circles into it. Loki realizes this is not Matriarch, but Mother. He gives a dry sob, of relief. Tears may come later.  
  
“That last one is a lie,” she chuckles. “But I am not concerned that you broke tribe taboo. It is taboo solely because of how hard these pregnancies are for elf bearers. However, at this point in history, most in our tribe think it is taboo because it is disgusting and it is disgusting because it is taboo. When you walk amongst our kin, you are right to maintain your illusion.”  
  
He is neither disowned, nor abandoned, nor shamed. Loki kisses her hands in gratitude.  
  
“Now! That’s done. But as your mother, I do have one concern,” Frigga says with a knowing smile. Loki feels a lurch of guilt.  
  
“There is a handsome, blond centaur who keeps appearing at the edge of the forest. For seven days now, he has shown up and stood for hours, staring forlornly out at our little village.”  
  
Loki grimaces and lowers his eyes. “Did you speak to him?” he mutters to the table.  
  
“I did not need to. My son, you need to talk to him. He is deeply fond of you and he does not understand. _He’s a centaur_. Now, you need neither abort nor bear the foal. That is your decision and I shall support you no matter what choice you make. But you must go to him and explain. He deserves that much.”  
  
He winces and submits without a word. There is no need to voice his submission; she is Matriarch.  
  
“Good, then. Let me know how it goes and what you decide. If you decide to keep the foal, you will want to leave the village, at least for the duration of the pregnancy. I doubt you will miss it.”  
  
~  
  
The field between the village and the forest is full of tall and tawny grasses. The world is bathed in dusk light and the air is fresh and cool. Thor’s blond tail starts swishing in excitement as the elf walks towards him. When Loki steps out of the grasses, the centaur trots happily over to him, but his smile transforms into a look of confusion. He can smell his foal in Loki, but he cannot see through the illusion.  
  
“Come on,” Loki mutters, grabbing Thor’s hand as he pulls them towards the cover of the forest. They walk wordlessly until they reach a clearing. Or perhaps the centaur’s patience has run out.  Thor plants himself in front of Loki. He cups Loki’s cheek. His brow is furrowed as he stares into Loki’s eyes.  
  
“What is this?” Thor asks, sliding his palm over Loki’s flat abdomen.  
  
Loki sighs and dispels the illusion. He watches the relief and happiness slide over the centaur’s face as Loki’s belly rounds out against his palm. He is not even two months gone and it is already beginning to show. Thor rubs his hand tenderly over the modest bulge.  
  
Then Thor emits a series of soft whimpers—centauri appeasement sounds—as he nuzzles into the crook of Loki’s neck. His tan fingers hook themselves in the waistband of Loki’s trousers and he pulls him closer, tries to kiss him. Loki pulls back, but he does not break contact. Thor kneels, bringing his blue eyes to the level of the elf’s sternum, and looks up at him sadly.  
  
Thor makes _menah_ , a centauri vocalization even softer than _crooja_. _Menah_ is “sorry”; _menah_ begs forgiveness.  
  
“For what are you apologizing?” Loki asks.  
  
“I did not tell you of your pregnancy the moment I knew,” Thor answers immediately. Loki scoffs, but the centaur’s face is open, honest, and intent. Then Loki’s brow furrows. Thor’s answer reveals devotion and duty.  
  
“No, Raeja’s Child, I was upset because I did not know this could happen,” Loki tries to explain in a soft, caring tone of voice. “When I mated with you, I did not mean to…I did not mean make this,” he says, tapping his stomach.  
  
The centaur looks crestfallen. He fiddles with the hem of Loki’s tunic and his blue eyes slide this way and that as he struggles to understand. “We were having fun, you were enjoying yourself. It can continue to be like that,” Thor attempts.  
  
“I did not intend to create a family with you. I had no intention of becoming your mate,” Loki repeats. His heart sinks in his chest as he watches the centaur’s eyes water and blink, water and blink, like wiping condensation from a window.  
  
“I might end it,” Loki murmurs, as gently as he can.  
  
Thor gapes up at him. His hands grip Loki’s hips. “I can take care of you and our foal! I can protect you and I can provide food—and, and you already have all you need through your tribe!”  
  
“If I choose to bear the foal, I have to leave my tribe.”  
  
“I can take care of you and our young!” Thor insists. “I want this foal I made with you!”  
  
“You still have time left in your must. Why don’t you go find another mate?”  
  
“No,” the word drops from Thor’s mouth like a hatchling from the nest. His accent is suddenly thick, curling the syllables, making his voice sound child-like as he says, “I like you better than anybody else.”  
  
_“Lohk-hai,”_ Thor pleads softly.  
  
The elf cups Thor’s cheek in his hand. “What do you want out of life?” he asks.  
  
The centaur blinks stupidly at him for a moment, as though the answer is so obvious it is inexplicably effortful to explain.  
  
“I want food and sex and companionship and family. And sunshine. What do you want?”  
  
“I want to carve out a niche for myself in the world, a place or with a group that feels like home. I don’t like most people. I feel so Other from the rest of my tribe and I don’t know where to go. I want to travel, but I don’t know where or how. My tribe is not my people, they don’t feel like me, I don’t feel welcome with them, I don’t feel like they consider me a part of them. I want to learn more seidr and do something with it. Maybe write books, maybe teach at the Mage’s Guild in the capital. Maybe tour the settlements of Alfheim, casting hexes and blessings depending on which way the wind moves me.”  
  
Thor swallows. “You feel out of place and out of ideas for how to fix that,” he paraphrases.  
  
“I am an elf. Our lives are more complicated.”  
  
“It does not have to be. Let us travel and explore and find your tribe. You already have me,” Thor says.  
  
Loki has no reply for that.  
  
He cannot tell if it is his hormones, guilt, or longing, but when Thor rises to his hooves and tries to kiss him, Loki allows it. Thor kisses him softly, one slow, sweet kiss after another, with one arm wrapped around Loki’s back and his free hand cupping his stomach.  
  
Thor’s lips stray to his cheeks, then his hairline. _Don’t,_ Thor pleads softly. He kisses him again and Loki swallows the kiss.  
  
_Menah,_ Loki hears against his lips. _Menah, menah, menah._  
  
~  
  
One month later, the elf and the centaur have fallen into an awkward truce. Thor shies away from touching upon the topic and Loki cannot make up his mind. There will come a point when he is too heavy with the foal for his abortifacients to work. He still has at least one month left to decide.  
  
He is truly fond of the centaur. Even his simplicity doesn’t bother Loki. Maybe they could travel, maybe this development could lead Loki towards finding his path in life? Maybe it will be followed by an adventure? Thor assures him centaur children essentially raise themselves. Or maybe he could just birth the foal and leave Thor with half of what he wanted.  
  
The ugly reality of this pregnancy did not make Loki hopeful.  
  
_Thor placed both of his hands on the underside of the elf’s belly. “When it gets too heavy, I will carry you on my back!” Thor said brightly._  
  
_It seemed a strange if innocuous thing to say. Loki thought nothing of it until Frigga pointed out the disturbing truth: the birth weight of a centaur always takes after the centaur parent, always one tenth of the centaur parent’s body weight. Frigga estimated a stallion as burly as Thor weighed about 2,000 pounds._  
  
_When he saw the centaur the next day, Loki nearly murdered him._  
  
But Frigga assures him she will send help if he chooses to bear the foal. Potions and unguents to ease the strain, the fatigue, the…unfortunate fact that he can’t just remain unconscious until it is over.  
  
Or he could just abort it. But the sheer eagerness and devotion Thor demonstrates to what he is already imagining will be their family always pulls Loki back to balancing on the fence. Maybe it is Loki who is lonely.  
  
Loki is pulled from his train of thought by a tug on his hand. They have reached the spot. Loki said he wanted to learn more of seidr, and Thor brought him to one of the forgotten, magical ruins deep within the forest. Loki brought supplies with him to record the markings on the walls. He can confer with his and his mother’s books when he returns to the village.  
  
Loki takes a brief walk around the main ruins to survey them. Then he chooses a good spot to start copying and begins.  
  
Thor is happy to bask in Loki’s present not-irritated-with-his-semen mood. He trots up and down the hallway with the rune light Loki made for him. He gazes at the various illustrations and glyphs, admiring but not comprehending. Loki learned quickly Thor has all the magical potential of mud.  
  
Hours pass, the sun passes its zenith in the sky, and then the shadows grow. Thor kneels down beside Loki’s latest encampment: a pillow, a board, quills, ink pots, four pieces of chalk of different colors, and leaves upon leaves of paper.  
  
“It is too late now to return to the village,” the centaur says. When Loki does not so much as glance away from the rune he is copying, Thor paws at his arm.  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“It will be dark before I can get you home.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“You will overtire yourself. You may trip or sprain your ankle in the dark.” _Fall down and kill the foal_ , he does not say.  
  
“I am fine,” Loki insists, but enough time has passed since their last fight that the centaur has grown brave. He picks up the leaves of paper and puts them in a pile, then does the same with the writing implements and ink pots, and places them all neatly back in the sack. He pulls the objects out of Loki’s still-writing hands without a flicker of hesitation.  
  
He drags Loki to his feet and grabs the pillow.  
  
Loki sighs and follows the centaur to whichever spot he deems acceptable for them to bed down for the night. That evening it is a verdant and lush bed of moss beneath two willow trees.  
  
Thor lies down and pulls Loki with him. Then his teeth are grazing against the outer rim of Loki’s ear, just the way that makes him melt. His tongue flicks out and Loki shivers, moans, sags against the centaur’s body. They make out for a while. Then hunger directs their mouths to food. Loki munches on bread from his pack. He watches in amusement as Thor eats grass.  
  
Somehow, the sight is surprising. Probably because horses eat grass, and when a horse has the head of a human, one tends to think it is a human and ignore the fact that at least half of the creature is horse.  
  
Would Thor be surprised if Loki followed suit and started munching from the earth? He probably had never even thought about what Loki would or would not do.  
  
“You barely know me,” Loki challenges.  
  
“I do, too.” Thor stops chewing grass to look at him, frustration in his eyes. “You are sexually compatible with me, you give me the things in life I was missing, you are clever, funny, observant, surprising, far-seeing, and you have a strange way of being sour, prickly, and problematic that makes me _pho_.”  
  
Loki smiles despite himself. _Pho_. A centaur concept: the warm, tender, and happy feelings an adult centaur feels for an adorable, usually younger centaur. Loki would simply say Thor meant this was adorable, but there seemed to be a vague semantic difference in the way centaurs applied it which did not fit into Lit Mer grammar. The other centaurs they encountered used _pho_ the same way.  
  
“You are also admirable. Skilled with your hand-lights.”  
  
“You mean my seidr?” Loki smirks.  
  
“And better with words, too.”  
  
The elf tries to steel himself against these praises. Thor will not win him over to his side with flattery.  
  
Thor finishes eating and lies down on the moss beside Loki again. Thor’s hands start moving over his body. He gropes Loki’s growing belly with the same enthusiasm as he does his cock. Loki finds his changing shape increasingly unattractive but Thor does not seem to find a single thing about it unappealing.  
  
Maybe centaurs did not have standards of attractiveness. Maybe they just rutted what smelled right. The thought makes the pleasant feelings sour and curdle in Loki’s chest. He pushes Thor away.  
  
“You only want me to keep the foal because you’re an instinctually-driven beast,” Loki snaps.  
  
The blond centaur blinks at him. “Yea,” he says.  
  
“What?!” the elf gapes at him. Loki was simply speaking in anger, but doesn’t Thor want them to have the foal because he wants them to be together?  
  
“I am a beast driven by instinct. I am earthy and simple and my interests are basic and I am made to want children, so I want children. The simple and base in me are both part of why you fell in love with me.”  
  
Loki presses his lips into a tight line. He turns away from Thor and crosses his arms over his chest. Outwitted by a centaur?  
  
“What makes you think I love you?” Loki grumbles.  
  
Thor embraces Loki from behind. “You stayed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Same handle as on [Tumblr.](http://radiatorfromspace.tumblr.com)


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